


Hero of This Story

by escribo



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escribo/pseuds/escribo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna grows up</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero of This Story

There was a moment during the interview with Sharon from Human Resources when Donna thought that maybe she wouldn't take the admin's job at the D.A.'s office, assuming they offered it to her, and just go to Europe instead, which had been the original plan.

Her on-again, off-again, currently-on-but-soon-to-be-off-again boyfriend had already made the reservations at a handful of inexpensive hotels, carefully plotting their way across nine countries in half as many weeks on the tattered map pinned to the wall of his walk-up efficiency on the Lower East Side. They had an itinerary that was color-coded and cross-reference because he was that sort of boy, wanting everything in its proper place. Donna was the same way, she knew, which is why they fought so frequently. He drove her a bit nuts. She still wanted to see the Louvre, climb to the roof of the Duomo, go yodeling in the Alps (if one still yodeled in the Alps), and she was worried that this might be her last chance.

Her mom, a free spirit who had been an honest-to-god hippie in Haight Asbury the year she gave birth to Donna, which goes a long way toward explaining Donna's middle name, thought it was a good idea. She had, in fact, given Donna $500 toward her plane ticket, a Frommers guide from the 60's ( _Europe on $5 a Day!_ ), and a list of her favorite cafes and shops that had probably closed in the intervening twenty-five years from when a customs agent had last stamped her passport. 

It was her mother's great shame that Donna's passport was empty--that, and the fact that Donna had been named Homecoming Queen with Joseph Lee Tennyson, who was now driving a cab in Atlanta, as her King. Her mom had thought Joey lacked imagination and that wearing high heels somehow diminished her. She was right about Joey but wrong about the heels but then her mom had always had strange aspirations for her daughters. Her mom had wanted her girls to rule the world one day. Running for Homecoming Court had been Donna's way of rebelling. Five year later, the tables had turned and Donna was able to ameliorate her mom's disappointment at her eldest sister's staid accounting job when she double majored in theatre and women studies at a state school but mostly learned how to laugh too loud and love too hard in the four and half years she was there. Europe seemed like the right path.

Donna smoothed down her skirt and surreptitiously rubbed the toe of her knock-off Manolo Blahnik's against the back of her leg as Sharon patted her platinum blonde upsweep and looked over Donna's resume one last time. Donna tried desperately to look worldly and urbane, capable even as she continued to think about running away.

It was her dad on her last call home who pointed out that Donna had another dream: to play Bessie in Clifford Odet's _Awake and Sing_. To do that, she needed to be _here_ \-- to live in New York City in her own tiny run-down apartment shared with two other girls rather than her childhood bedroom back in a suburb of Atlanta with its yellow Strawberry Shortcake bedspread and the Duran Duran posters taped up over the tiny rosebud patterned wallpaper. And for that she needed a job.

"The attorneys can seem like children sometimes," Sharon was saying and Donna nodded, her eyes still bright with what she hoped conveyed unassailable enthusiasm combined with a maturity beyond her twenty-three years. Even if she was unsure if she would accept the position, she at least wanted to have the option. "You can't give them an inch without them taking a mile."

"Oh, yes ma'am. My momma taught me how to rule with an iron fist and not let anyone walk on me and my daddy taught me how to be benevolent. I am sure I can handle anything they throw at me." Donna isn't sure why that was her first response when she had a perfectly good answer practiced from her book of _1001 Interview Questions_. Sharon had just given a snorting kind of laugh and a slow, _oh, I like you,_ before she offer the job to Donna on the spot. 

To Donna's surprise, she accepted and broke up with her boyfriend on the way home while standing at a pay phone outside the Canal Street Station. She called her parents right after, crying and laughing in the same breath. This was her first grown up job. It felt like giving up and winning at the same time. After she hung up, she squared her shoulders, hailed a cab, and went to use the $500 her mom had sent her to buy her first pair of real Blahnik's--ultrasoft black suede with grosgrain trim, pointed toes, Mary Jane straps with the cutest little button closure, and the narrowest two inch heels imaginable. She loved them. She also promised herself that she'd take herself to Europe minus overbearing boyfriend and itinerary.

A month later, Donna found Sharon hadn't been joking about the attorneys.

Six months later, she had them mostly house trained to sit, stay, and make their requests well before five o'clock. At least until a rather earnest and determined Harvey Specter arrived and upset the tea cart. She liked him. She especially liked the way he would walk into the secretarial pool with doughnuts and a box of coffee, smiling in a way designed to charm the pants off anyone looking (and several were). 

A year later, Harvey took her out to a tiny and expensive French bistro to celebrate her anniversary. She wondered for about three minutes if he was hitting on her until he outlined his entire plan for the next ten years and she realized exactly how she fit into it. Harvey had plans--big plans--and so, now, did she. 

She told him about her own plans--the audition she'd gone on last week, the enormous change jar she kept in her closet that would get her half way across the Atlantic (though no further), the insanely cute pair of Louboutin's she found in a second hand store in Soho with the scuffed toe and the barely noticeable salt damage that she was sure she could remove with vinegar. He didn't laugh but just gave her the name of a guy he knew who could repair the scuff. It was then that she told him her middle name. He didn't laugh then, either.

Donna's mother used to tell her _baby girl, you have to get rid of the life you planned so you can live the life that's waiting for you,_ usually over a pint of rocky road with Donna's mascara smeared across her cheeks and one of her pretty little plans smashed to pieces at her feet. It was something she'd picked up from the hippies, Donna was sure, and Donna had never understood it, not really. Not completely. She'd certainly never embraced it, at least not until she was standing at Harvey's side as they walked out of the D.A.'s office. 

She'd had a lot of pretty little plans, most that never came to pass, but she thought something now that she hadn't thought was possible all those years ago when she'd sat primly across from Sharon from Human Resource in that interview so long ago: this was her life, and she loved it, every minute.

**Author's Note:**

> The actual quote is by Joseph Campbell, not Donna's fictional mother, and it goes _we must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us_.


End file.
